Newnan, November 20, 1865

Newnan, November 20, 1865

AS I looked up the streets of Newnan from the windows and platform of the railway car, it seemed a charming place, -- a gentle slope toward the east, three or four white stores, the corner of the court-house with its surroundings of luxuriant China trees, the hotel with its broad and high piazzas, a wealth of trees and shrubbery everywhere, on all sides handsome cottage houses embowered in greenness and rose blossoms, to the right and left numberless oaks with their crimson and golden frost-touched leaves, and then in the dim background the dreamy and uncertain outline of wooded hills with their blue beauty shimmering in the low sun of a glorious Indian summer afternoon!

Yet Newnan is just like every other Southern town, -- streets full of mud-holes and wallowing swine, fences in every stage of tumble-down ruin, sidewalks in every condition of break-neck disorder, yards full of sticks and stones and bits of every conceivable rubbish, -- everywhere a grand carnival of sloth and unthrift and untidiness and slovenliness, -- everywhere that apathy of shiftlessness so pitiful to the soul of a New-Englander!

'T is n't Nature's fault. She is infinitely more bountiful
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than under our Northern skies. Wild-flowers beautifying every grove and creek-side, and roses and half a dozen strange blossoms tempting into every garden, -- and snow on our Massachusetts hillsides! One may well say the war did not produce its full and proper fruitage if the year 1870 does not show this fair South-land redeemed from the careless mistreatment of all these long years, -- this Southern people educated to a love of order and cleanliness, and an appreciation of thrift, industry, and the royal dignity of labor!

Newnan is the county seat of Coweta County, and has a population of about twenty-seven hundred. It is on the line of railroad from Atlanta to Montgomery, -- forty miles below Atlanta, thirty miles from the western line of Georgia, and rather above the middle of the State north and south. It is the home of very many rich planters, boasts numerous handsome suburban residences, is said to have a more elegant and cultured society than any other place in the western part of the State, prides itself on its early and constant devotion to the cause of secession, and has just elected radical Secessionists and unconquered Rebels to the Legislature.

"If your party carries the day in the forthcoming elections in the North," said a Convention delegate to me at Milledgeville, three weeks ago, "I shall think it perfectly useless for us to send congressmen to Washington." These Georgians thought the President had gone over to the Democratic party, and one man assured me that he wished the success of their nominees in New York and New Jersey!

Surprised as most of them are at the result, not one man in fifty seems to have any true conception of the real significance of the late elections in the North. The merchant of Columbus who said in the public parlor of the hotel one evening so loudly that half a dozen persons heard him, "I'm in favor of having our men go to Congress and take their seats any way, whether the d -- d Yankees are willing or not," only put in strong phrase an idea I have heard half a
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dozen times in more cautious language. If there are fifty good Union men in all the towns where I have stopped within two weeks they live so quietly that neither observation nor inquiry can find them; and the great mass of the people characterize the result of the recent political campaign in the North as sectional.

Through this part of the State the moral standing of the citizen seems to be measured by his war record. The chief requirement in respect to any man is that he shall "go with the State." The supremacy of the Constitution of the United States is formally acknowledged, but the common conversation of all classes asserts the supremacy of the State. The Calhoun doctrine is pushed to its last conclusion. There is not merely a broad assertion of the rights of the States, but an open enunciation of the supremacy of the State over the general government, -- an enlarged reaffirmation of the doctrine declared in simply repealing the ordinance of secession.

A gentleman whom I met in the eastern part of the State said to me: "If there had been three bold and true leaders in the winter of 1860-61, we could have saved the State from secession, in my judgment; but Benj. Hill forsook us, and then Alex. Stephens forsook us, and we had only Josh. Hill left, and the State swung into Rebellion."

Benjamin H. Hill lives at LaGrange, some twenty miles below here. He has long been one of the leading men of the State. He acquiesced in secession, but did not go into the army, I believe. Pending the recent election, he was asked his opinion as to the duty of the people in the present emergency, particularly with reference to the expediency of electing gentlemen to Congress who cannot take the test oath. The following letter is his answer: --

"The oath is unconstitutional, because it adds to and varies from the oath required by the Constitution. This is settled by several adjudications.